By Frederick Philander WINDHOEK The exclusive Standard Bank’s ‘Banking Group’ Programme, came to an end recently with the graduation of nine students. For the past three months these students spent weeks and months working on various projects within Standard Bank under the guidance of the bank’s senior managers. The students have spent a lot of time assessing various aspects of the bank’s business and will add a lot of value to various business units through research, surveys and their subsequent findings. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Standard Bank in cooperation with LTR (Ltd), UNAM and the Polytechnic of Namibia launched this programme in Namibia in 2004. The first six students graduated at the end of that year. Five of the six on the 2004 programme and eight of the nine on the 2005 programme were employed at Standard Bank Namibia. According to Wilhenica Uiras, Head of Human Resources at the bank, said the ‘Banking Group’ Programme is a leadership and skills development programme designed to recruit and train committed highly potential graduates and students from specified universities. The programme, which was developed and is managed by LTR Ltd (London Trust and Research), was jointly funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Standard Bank for the first two years. Standard Bank has subsequently taken full ownership of the programme – as of 2006 – and is now its sole financier. “We are proud of the calibre of students we attract and the enormous value they add to our business. We look forward to welcoming them as employees within Standard Bank,” said the bank’s Carin de Klerk. The programme is currently running in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, and the operations will soon expand to Standard Bank in Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia.